On top of the three castes presides the termite queen. The queen is unique in her own right. Termite queens can live for 30 years, which is longer than any other known insect species. She is responsible for ordering and controlling termite society.
Homes that have a termite infestation will likely run into the worker caste first. The workers are unique insofar as they never need to sleep and can thus continue destroying your property 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Termites eat by extracting the cellulose from plant-based building materials such as wood. It’s important to note, however, that termites can extract cellulose from drywall and other building materials that are not (necessarily) predominantly wood.
How Do Termites Get into Your Home?
The majority of termites that do the majority of damage here in the United States are subterranean termites. As their name suggests, they reside mostly in the soil. When they enter a home, they generally do so through cracks in your home’s foundation or underneath the basement floor.
Termites like houses for three main reasons. Firstly, homes are climate controlled and provide warmth in the winter, spring, and fall. Secondly, homes provide shelter from other insects, birds, and natural predators. Lastly, termites will find a lot of stuff to eat in homes and there isn’t very much you can do about that.
In the summer months, termites thrive in places where puddles collect. Those with leaky gutters or run-off from air conditioners need to be very careful about where water pools. Termites can access your home through cracks as small as the skinny side of your credit card.
Once they’re in, they begin attacking your wood. Once the cellulose has been drained from the wood, it turns it into an unstable pulp.
It’s Termite Season All Year Long
You may be under the impression that termites only attack in the warmer months. This is false. Termites inside climate-controlled homes can continue to attack all year long. Termites, like ants, have an internal mechanism that tells them when it’s time to hibernate. But that mechanism never goes off when they’re inside of a nice warm home. So if you have termite activity, you’ll have to address it no matter what time of year it is.
That being said, swarming season begins in the spring for most subterranean termites. That’s when they begin reproducing at a breakneck pace to form new colonies. So most homeowners will begin to recognize the signs of infestation in the early to mid summer.
Managing a Termite Infestation
When you contract with a certified pest control service, the process is always done completely and correctly with minimal threat to your children and pets on account of the insecticide we use to eradicate the colony.
Further, the homeowners run the risk of decimating the colony without entirely eradicating it, which means that the colony will eventually repopulate itself and come back just as strong.
Pointe Pest Control helps homeowners eradicate already-existing infestations and prevent future ones. This can include shoring up defenses that made your home permeable to termites or using monthly soil treatments to keep the population at bay.
